America. My vitals were being torn from me. I should go to
the devil without her. I don't know what I said. But I knew the brute
love which had risen like a lion in me would never conquer the woman who
kissed me in the darkness and held me at bay.

"O Louis--O Lazarre! Think of Paul and Cousin Philippe! You shall be
your best for your little mother! I will come to you sometime!"

Then she held the door between us, and I went down around and around the
spiral of stone.

BOOK III

ARRIVING

I

Even when a year had passed I said of my escape from the Tuileries: "It
was a dream. How could it have happened?" For the adventures of my
wandering fell from me like a garment, leaving the one changeless
passion.

Skenedonk and I met on the ship a New England minister, who looked upon
and considered us from day to day. I used to sit in the stern, the miles
stretching me as a rack stretches flesh and tendons. The minister
regarded me as prostrated by the spider bite of that wicked Paris; out
of which he learned I had come, by talking to my Oneida.

The Indian and I were a queer pair that interested him, and when he
discovered that I bore the name of Eleazar Williams his friendship was
sealed to us. Eunice Williams of Deerfield, the grandmother of Thomas
Williams, was a traditional brand never snatched from the burning, in
the minister's town of Longmeadow, where nearly every inhabitant was
descended from or espoused to a Williams. Though he himself was born
Storrs, his wife was born Williams; and I could have lain at his feet
and cried, so open was the heart of this good man to a wanderer
rebounding from a family that disowned the pretender. He was my welcome
back to America. The breath of eastern pines, and the resinous sweetness
of western plains I had not yet seen, but which drew me so that I could
scarcely wait to land, came to me with that man. Before the voyage ended
I had told him my whole history as far as I knew it, except the story of
Madame de Ferrier; and the beginning of it was by no means new to him.
The New England Williamses kept a prayerful eye on that branch
descending through the Iroquois. This transplanted Briton, returning
from his one memorable visit to the England of his forefathers, despised
my Bourbon claims, and even the French contraction of my name.

"What are you going to do now, Eleazar?" he inquired.

Hugging my old dream to myself, feeling my heart leap toward that
western